Senate rejects bid to halt sale of bombs and rifles to Israel, but Democratic opposition grows

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate rejected an effort Wednesday from Sen. Bernie Sanders to block the sale of U.S. bombs and firearms to Israel, though the vote showed a growing number of Democrats opposed to the arms sales amid widespread hunger and suffering in Gaza.

Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has repeatedly tried to block the sale of offensive weapons to Israel over the last year. The resolutions before the Senate on Tuesday would have stopped the sale of $675 million in bombs as well as shipments of 20,000 automatic assault rifles to Israel.

They again failed to gain passage, but 27 Democrats — more than half the caucus — voted for the resolution that applied to assault rifles, and 24 voted for the resolution that applied to bomb sales. It was more than any of Sanders’ previous efforts, which at a high mark in November last year gained 18 votes from Democrats.

The vote tally showed how the images of starvation emerging from Gaza are creating a growing schism in what has traditionally been overwhelming support for Israel from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

Sanders said Democrats are responding to “a significant majority of the American people who are tired of spending billions and billions of dollars on an Israeli government which is currently starving children to death.”

As the war approaches its second year, the leading international authority on food crises said this week that a “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip.” International pressure, including from President Donald Trump, has led Israel to announce measures, including daily humanitarian pauses in fighting in parts of Gaza and airdrops. But the U.N. and Palestinians on the ground say little has changed, and desperate crowds continue to overwhelm delivery trucks.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, argued that Hamas was to blame both for the conflict and the current situation in Gaza. All Republican senators voted against Sanders’ resolutions.

“They use the people of Gaza as human shields, and they steal the food that the people of Gaza need,” Risch said. “It is in the interest of America and the world to see this terrorist group destroyed.”

Known as joint resolutions of disapproval, the measures would have had to pass both houses of Congress and withstand any presidential veto to become binding. Congress has never succeeded in blocking arms sales with the joint resolutions.

Democratic senators spent an hour on Wednesday evening with a series of floor speeches calling attention to the children who have starved to death in Gaza. They are also calling on the Trump Administration to recalibrate its approach to the conflict, including a large-scale expansion of aid into Gaza channeled through organizations experienced working in the area.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement following the vote that the Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “have a responsibility to urgently” surge food and other aid into Gaza. Still, he voted against the resolution.

“I have also long held that security assistance to Israel is not about any one government but about our support for the Israeli people,” said Schumer, a New York Democrat.

Other senior Democrats were breaking from that standard.

Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who voted against similar resolutions from Sanders in the past, voted in support of the legislation this time.

“As a longtime friend and supporter of Israel, I am voting yes to send a message: the Netanyahu government cannot continue with this strategy,” she said in a statement.

Another Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, said it was still “painful” to support the resolution.

“For many of us who have devoted our congressional careers to supporting Israel, standing by them through difficult times, it is impossible to really explain or defend what is going on today,” Durbin said. “Gaza is starving and dying because of the policies of Bibi Netanyahu.”

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